Page 338 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Onl ne Publ sh ng | 1

transsexual (GLBT) communities (and offer new opportunities for the general
public to engage and learn about issues that concern this community) provide
positive outlets for expression, online publishing also offers the same expressive
opportunities for those promoting hate speech and bigotry.
Meanwhile, fan fiction sites have emerged as consumers have claimed the
rights to create original stories based on their favorite media texts and make
them publicly available. Fans of the series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of
Superman wrote an entire fifth season for a series that ABC cancelled after four.
Often, fan stories focus on character relationships, plot devices, or thematic con-
cerns that are only tangentially addressed in the official text and are, therefore,
not derivatives, but (unofficial) extensions of a story world originally created
by others. These online publishing initiatives raise important questions about
both who has the right to tell stories about popular but privately owned heroes
and which stories count in terms of the overall meanings accrued by particular
characters. Why does fiction about Batman written by GLBT fans not count as
canonical even when it might be more innovative than the officially sanctioned
stories commissioned by Time Warner Incorporated and DC Comics?

CrEaTivE ConsTrainTs
The creative freedoms potentially offered through online publishing possi-
bilities must first overcome cultural, economic, and legal constraints in order
to truly revolutionize how writing transpires. As the example of unsolicited fan
fiction suggests, questions over ownership, fair use, and intellectual property
violation pose real obstacles for creative engagement with popular culture. Fan
sites face threats of legal action from intellectual property owners, particularly
when fan art, fiction, and other community activities take the story in unap-
proved directions that challenge dominant cultural assumptions of good taste
and morality as well as profits.
While fan art and fiction can be argued to constitute fair use of copyrighted
materials, the uneven economic grounds upon which fans and owners do battle
regularly favors the latter, who can—and have—dragged “violators” into court,
forcing them to incur large legal expenses. These threats continue to deter cre-
ative expression even if they are legally permitted under fair-use statutes. Even
when creators are willing to assert their fair-use rights, popular hosting sites
typically espouse conservatism when it comes to threats of copyright violation.
YouTube regularly yields to the demands of media owners to remove question-
able materials, making it increasingly difficult for online publishing endeavors
to find an audience or home in which to grow.
Creativity may also be constrained by the very tools provided for users to
create online publications. Robert Schrag has argued that in assessing the creative
opportunities generated by DIY technologies, it is necessary to consider the
ways in which they already advantage certain modes of expression over others
through the tool selection they provide and the tutorials they offer new users.
Schrag suggests that these structures not only limit what counts as “allowable”
creative expression, but also tend to “[nudge] the creative impulse toward the